


Three of Swords

by Kanja



Category: Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 23:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5946742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanja/pseuds/Kanja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Efe's entire life has been a lie and the Sworn Mehel have no idea. When she decides that she must live an open, honest life and leave her temple, she has no idea what is in store for her. Now, she is following the trail of a walking, sentient mountain, trying desperately to keep the police away, all while she tries to discover who she is and which path she is meant to walk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three of Swords

It was deep underground, in the sunken urban wreckage occupied only by vermin and parentless children like herself, where Asad gave her the name ‘Efe.’ It meant “the prevailing spirit” in the language of the Sworn Mehel, and it was a boy's name. The message was clear from the beginning; she would emerge from her perilous, long-forgotten tomb as a candidate for the Sworn herself, reborn into a life of discipline and structure. The nameless girl that she was, the one who hunted fungus and hoarded artefacts around the abandoned city, would not be leaving the crypt with them. 

  
  


But she'd come along anyway. Beneath the Order's formless robes, the orphan girl had been maturing into a young woman. During meditation, her mind wandered restlessly. At night, when Asad helped her sneak into the baths to cleanse alone, she eyed her reflection in the pools and wished for longer hair and new clothes and makeup. On missions into the towns nearby, she traded her talents for cigarettes and booze, healing itching loins and chain-smoking until morning came. In the darkest hours of the night, she whipped back the veil on her altar to expose her boombox and played her music softly, listening to the powerful wails of women she wanted to be like, who sang of independence and expression and something forbidden to the Mehel at all -- love. 

  
  


Love for the jiva, the essence of all life and energy, was fine in the Temple of Sīs. So was love for all that possessed the jiva: man and animal and plant alike. And Efe knew in her heart that Asad loved her, even if he never said that in as many words, and the Mehel would never banish her for admitting that she loved him back. She loved all her brothers, even if they didn't really know her at all. 

  
  


But her radio sang of a different kind of love. It was a love that wasn't quite so simple, a love about looking and touching, complex in its agonies and joy. It was something that Efe could finally meditate on, as she dragged her cot beneath the slatted window in the side of the temple's white-washed tower, hanging out of her cell far enough to feel the wind on her face. Coupled with the incense burning on her bench, this was another tactic to keep Asad from commenting on the unfamiliar scents in her room every time he visited. 

  
  


Efe took a drag off her cigarette and felt better than she ever remembered feeling in her life. Because communication was not the strongest virtue of the Mehel, she never stopped feeling like every privilege of the Order was borrowed. She felt this like needles in her sides, stabbing her all over, confining her to a painful dance between the tips, trying not to disturb one point or another. Out of her entire brotherhood, she took corrections the hardest, sure that this time would be her last, that they would send her home and Asad would see her off with disappointment in his eyes. As she grew, too, she became even more painfully aware that she was conning the Sworn. They accepted only full-blood Mehel boys, and she was a half-blood Mehel girl. The priests were known for their placid ways and calm demeanor, and Efe was restless and high energy and an awful fit for this life altogether. 

  
  


Asad had tried to comfort her. He pointed out verses in the scripture that said the jiva would not bless anyone unless it was right. Full-blood Mehel would call upon the light and be found impotent, signifying them as villains in the legends. It was only something extra to think about when Efe would channel her gift into the chakras of yet another rashy teenager and find that her healing took a minute to warm up. 

  
  


She could feel that it was time to move on, before she disappointed someone, or revealed her and Asad's fraud, dishonoring his name forever. In town, she made her preparations and worked harder than she ever had before. She found a special opportunity in a cruise liner that patrolled the sacred lands and returned to the mainland to pick up and drop off tourists, mopping floors and washing buckets of crystal goblets and china plates. Her first impression of the New World was one of opulence: men in tuxedos rolling fat cigars between their gold-adorned fingers, while the woman, magical in their own way, slithered like serpents in silk dresses and fanciful makeup. On that boat, Efe was sure that she had made the right decision, and that even though she danced with a slimy mop every night instead of an adoring suitor in an expensive tux, she only had to expose herself on the mainland to be well on her way to her own ship in the stars. 

  
  


That didn't happen. Like most foreign “quacks,” she wasn't even qualified to be a receptionist in the seediest mainland clinics and was banished to the slums of Chiqua Bridge in Bon Secour, just outside the districts where the stars shopped with paparazzi stuck to their gut like remoras. As the name implied, she was surrounded mostly by Chiquans, people from the other far-Eastern continent that shared some of the Mehel’s ideaology, but none of their culture or language. The latter was the worst part: Efe understood not a word of what they said, and though they all spoke English to some degree, the Chiquans preferred their own. Learning was not going to happen, as guarded as the people were, so Efe was oftentimes paranoid and clueless during conversations. 

  
  


Still, they were not all so bad. Sun, who rented the room upstairs from her laundromat to Efe in exchange for a fair rate on rent, maybe even liked her. More often than not, Sun would frequent Efe’s little combination apartment/herbal shop, inspecting the tonics and satchets and stone amulets that Efe sold in five-for-five deals. Sun was a healer herself, albeit a wholly different one from a wholly different world, and taught Efe the abridged version of her values and practices. As potent as the potions they made was the intoxication of their theatrics, which was a big part of the process. People took comfort in the ritual and unnecessary mysticism of Sun’s craft, and Efe tried to keep it traditional for the sake of their business arrangement. 

  
  


“You are lazy.” 

  
  


That was the plan most of the time, anyway. Efe did leave her home because she wanted to find her own path, and she was not about to completely prostrate herself before someone else's. She sighed, peering out from between the curtain that separated her living space from the kitchen-shop. Sun was standing there, her impeccable bun shining blue-black in the scant light through the dusty window, her eyes narrowed in distaste. “When you clean this place? What if I customer right now?”

  
  


“Then you're gonna have to be a waiting customer,” Efe said, settling down in her seat again so that she could study her computer screen. “I'm tracking that shipment right now.”

  
  


“What you track for? It show up or it do not show up. I thought you monk-- where your patience?”

  
  


Efe could not explain why she could not be patient for this package to arrive. It had been forever since she'd done anything for herself, and placing that order had made her feel happiness again for the first time in a long time. She supposed that was what people called “shop therapy.” “The website said it'd be here today, but it didn't come this morning.”

  
  


“Of course not come today! Today is Yule Feast, national holiday. Nothing come on Yule Day.”

  
  


Efe slammed her fists down on the keyboard. “They just  _ had _ a holiday!”

  
  


“Westerner love holiday. Western mind is lazy mind, need all the holiday it can get.” Sun ripped the curtain back, staring as Efe growled. “Get act together, girl. You alone tonight, big night.”

  
  


“Where are you gonna be?” Efe asked irritably. 

  
  


“Yule Feast, of course,” Sun said with a smile. 

  
  


“Chiquans do not celebrate Yule,” Efe pointed out. 

  
  


“Do here. All Chiquan would if restaurant serve cranberry sauce and turkey one day only. Keep book tidy,” Sun commanded. “And no call. All of family gonna be there.”

  
  


“The whole neighborhood is gonna be here,” Efe protested. Every time there was a national holiday, the slums came alive, visiting all the shops and restaurants owned by locals, knowing they would not be full of tourists on those days. Efe already had three acupuncture sessions scheduled, and those alone would take up most of her day. 

  
  


“Push new cream. You sell ten today, I bring food tomorrow. You sell more, I not send you back where you come from,” Sun snickered. Her eye was on Efe's computer screen, though. “I tell you not to order  _ datura _ . No use for that, you waste shop money.”

  
  


“I bought it with my own money, and it has very powerful properties. We use it often in Sīsma,” Efe replied, a little defensively. She was not going to use it in any traditional sense, but she also wasn't going to give up the chance to call Sun out on her ignorance. 

  
  


Of course, that didn't phase her in the least. 

  
  


“Good. You buy what I say. Remember: more than ten new cream. And no call!” Sun yelled as she slammed the door. Efe waited, sure of one thing, and just as she expected, the door opened again just a little. “And happy Yule to you,” Sun added, slamming the door again. 

  
  


Efe had to smile. At her core, Sun was either a huge softy or Efe had some divine way of winning a heart over, no matter how vicious the owner of said heart actually was. Either way, the comment put Efe in high spirits as she turned to her computer again, only to have them come crashing down again when the bell on her door rang and two customers, already in the midst of an argument, came yowling and stomping into the shop. Efe took one last forlorn glance at the computer screen and her order, and resigned herself to one difficult, frustrating day. 


End file.
